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Everything You NEED To Know About The Sherlock Comic-Con Panel

UPDATED: SO MUCH NEW INFO ABOUT THE NEXT SEASON. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and Sue Vertue talk ABOUT SO MANY THINGS SHERLOCK AND IT'S THE BEST PANEL OF THE ENTIRE CONVENTION.

1. How Sherlock survived the Reichenbach Fall

View this video on YouTube

(FYI: Cumberbatch uses a stuffed monkey in his explanation)

Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch recorded video greetings for the fans at Comic-Con and in Cumberbatch's hilarious video, he "explains" how Sherlock survived Series 2's cliffhanger ending. (Freeman encouraged the fans to attack Moffat and the producers in his equally amusing clip.)

"It's a rational explanation," Moffat said. "We knew how it was going to be done. When you see the answer, you'll see yes, we had to know in advance, we had to plot it out."

2. Why Sherlock's stars weren't at Comic-Con

"One of them is a high-functioning sociopath and the other one is a hobbit; let's not set the bar too high," Moffat joked.

3. Series 3 will go into detail exploring how Sherlock's death affected all of the characters

"The big thing we wanted to explore," Mark Gatiss said, "is that in the original story, Dr. Watson's reaction is dealt with very quickly. He sort of forgives Sherlock. And we thought, that can't happen. Because if your best friend pretended to be dead, then reappeared, that's going to have a big impact. We wanted to explore how it affected all of the regulars."

4. John will get married and ask Sherlock to be his best man

"Hot off the presses from a hundred years ago, John does get married," Moffat quipped. "We hoped that you wouldn't sneak ahead and read the books."

In a clip from the second episode of the new season, "The Sign of Three," we see an amazing, beautiful scene between John and Sherlock. I'm still flailing, so here's Hypable's description of the sneak peek from their liveblog of the panel.:

Watson's wedding! That's the clip they're sharing. Jumps to clip from a different scene. In second clip Sherlock is cooking tea with a wild contraption. Watson asks Sherlock to be his best man, which makes Sherlock runs off into one of his wild intelligent tangents about what a "best man" is. Watson confesses Sherlock is his best friend.

There's a beautiful moment where Sherlock and Watson establish they're best friends. It was a fantastic clip, fans are going to love it.

SPOILER ALERT: JOHN SAID THAT HE LOVED SHERLOCK. THERE MAY HAVE BEEN A HUG.

5. On set, Benedict is "goofy" while Martin is "sardonic"

When asked what fans would be surprised to learn about the stars, Mark Gatiss jokingly replied, "Violence, the mood swings, the clown costumes."

"They have a natural chemistry," he continued. "They're just completely different people, very much like Sherlock and John are. They really have a good laugh that translates onto the screen — how much love there is behind the cameras."

Steven Moffat said that Benedict is the "goofy" one and Martin is "very sardonic and dry." Gatiss agreed, saying that Benedict is very "puppyish" and "bumbly" while Martin is "direct," and suggested that the two should swap costumes and see what happens.

6. Sherlock isn't a sociopath

Moffat said that labeling himself as a sociopath is just a "convenient" way for Sherlock to get away with things. After encountering Moriarty, however, Sherlock realizes he's "comparatively nice" and that he's on the side of the good guys. "The slow humanisation John encourages is all part of it."

7. Andrew Scott, who plays Sherlock's nemesis Moriarty, will appear in the new series... as a corpse

Moffat joked that it was easier and cheaper to pay Scott to play dead than to create a dead Moriarty mannequin. And yes, Moriarty is dead. Unlike Sherlock, he did not fake his death.

"He can't come back from that," Moffat said. "He shot himself in the face. What more do you want?"

8. Who would solve a mystery faster: Batman, Sherlock or the Doctor

"Batman would be absolutely lost compared to Sherlock and the Doctor," Moffat said. "With those two though... It'd be a bitch fight between them and they'd never get anything solved."

9. According to Moffat, "Sex for Sherlock is brainwork"

"Sex for Sherlock, it happens up here," Moffat said as he motioned to his head. "Sex is brainwork for him. Can you imagine romance with Sherlock? He'd poison his girlfriend just to see if it works."

10. Series 3 is going to end on another damn cliffhanger because Moffat enjoys toying with people's emotions

"You'll be watching the end of the last episode going, 'They wouldn't stop it there would they?'" Moffat laughed.

11. WE STILL DON'T KNOW THE PREMIERE DATE

"Early 2014." That's it. That's all they said.

October 31st is the RUMORED UK premiere date for the first episode of series 3, "The Empty Hearse," but this has yet to be officially confirmed by the BBC and it seems unlikely. Also, it's worth noting that Benedict Cumberbatch is (in his own words) being "very forceful" about allowing the new episodes to be broadcast simultaneously in the UK and the US.

"It seem churlish, really, to deny savvy Sherlock fans, who know how to break code and watch it illegally, to stop us from having an audience in America," Cumberbatch said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times Thursday. "There's a very hungry audience of all ages. Why they should be denied the pleasure because of some odd disjuncture, I don't know. I'm being very forceful about that and mentioning it in all the interviews. We're aiming for the end of December or early January, but we haven't had a date confirmed."

12. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have been optioned for a 4th series

WHAT THIS ACTUALLY MEANS: Cumberbatch and Freeman are contractually obligated to appear in any potential fourth series. In telling the fans this at Comic-Con, the BBC has announced that their return and a fourth series is a thing that will be happening.... they just haven't said when.